BIG HOPES FOR LITTLE SAIGON

Foundation hopes branding will help with revitalization of a stretch of El Cajon Boulevard in City Heights

His foundation receives sponsorship from major businesses such Wells Fargo, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Valley View Casino, along with grants from nonprofits like the Weingart Foundation.

Vuong has partnered closely with the El Cajon Boulevard Business Improvement Association, which is funded by assessments from the 900 businesses along the corridor from Park Avenue to 54th Street. The association will be able to contribute money for infrastructure improvements and leverage its reputation to obtain grants from other organizations like the San Diego Association of Governments.

Forging identity

The establishment of San Diego’s Little Saigon district is timely, said Thuy Vo Dang, lead researcher for the Vietnamese American Oral History Project at the University of California Irvine.

It typically takes 30 to 40 years for a group to reclaim its history and cultural identity, she said. The first generation is typically focused on basic necessities such as clothes, food, housing and education. The second generation is traditionally much more Americanized and focused on straddling the line between two cultural identities, she said.

“By the third generation, you will start to see some social and cultural anxieties about losing your heritage,” she said. “So efforts like establishing Little Saigon are efforts to try to inscribe a stronger sense of identity going forward into the third and fourth generation.”

For that reason, Vo Dang said, while San Diego’s Little Saigon may never look identical to the one in Orange County, it can still be culturally significant. To ensure that, she said, the Little Saigon foundation must meet the needs of the existing community.

Vietnamese immigrants may have suspended many of their differences to establish themselves in the United States, she said, but now San Diego’s Vietnamese-American community is well-established, diverse — and fragmented.

“The issue will be how to navigate all of that and bring people together under one goal,” Vo Dang said.